Waldron vs. Smith: Shipwreck at The Eastward, 1671

Abstract

A 1672 court case reveals a tale of suspected treachery and shipwreck on the seventeenth-century New England frontier. As the narrative moves along the seaboard from Boston to Nova Scotia., details emerge about little-known aspects of life on the frontier's fringe: the fragile relations with the French and Native Americans, the movable community of coastal shipboard fur traders, and the Sagadahoc settlers who assisted them. Depositions by castaway Boston-based seamen and Sagadahoc residents provide insight into the shadowy figures and conditions that existed beyond the Kennebec River, “at the eastward. Barbara S. Rumsey was born in Buffalo, New York, and moved to East Boothbay Maine, in 1952. She received a B.A. from Boston University in 1967 and has been director of the Boothbay Region Historical Society since 1989. In 1995 she published a book on an East Boothbay shipyard and tidemill, entitled Hodgdon Shipbuilding and Mills.